Sunday, May 27, 2012

Sedgwick's Bar and Grill

This post is from a while back when the Bulls were still in the playoffs. Now I for one prefer to watch sporting events (especially early round games) at home. We have a good TV, a fridge full of beer and food, and a couch with my imprint already on it. Ricky and Jeremy, however, will have none of that and need to turn watching a game into an outing whenever possible. More or less, that's how we ended up at Sedgwick's.

Logistics
We got there 45 minutes early, expecting to fight a crowd of eager Bulls fan, but finding the bar practically empty. It worked out nicely though since we ended up with a group of 15 people or so by the end of the night. It's a pretty simple sports bar setup that gets obnoxiously crowded at times, but usually not until later in the night. They had a huge projector set up for watching the game, but it wasn't HD.

Our waitress was helpful and willing to put up with our obnoxious indecisiveness. I don't think anyone came with the intention of eating dinner, but they had some half off appetizer deal which sparked a feeding frenzy. Most of the appetizers and sandwiches are in the $10 range, and the portions are plenty relative to the cost. What we didn't know, was that they set up a free buffet of crummy but filling fried food around 11PM or so. I don't think we would've been able to wait that long anyways, but it's interesting to know.

The Food
We took advantage of the appetizer deal by getting orders of the Barbecue Pulled Pork Nachos, the Tater Tot Mountain, the Wings, and the Shrimp Festival. The nachos, besides the pulled pork, had the standard nacho cheese and jalapeno topping. The coverage by key ingredients was pretty poor, and we ended up with a lot of blank chips. The same could be said about the tater tot mountain (which was more of a mesa). The bacon bits were rather scattered as was the cheese coverage. We had the shrimp festival served grilled. It came with 10 little chunks of shrimp that I'm sure were frozen just a few minutes before getting to us. Even with the half off, I thought this dish was a bad deal. The wings were standard with a thick hot sauce. The texture of the wing was a little too tough though.

The Tater Tot Mountain

The Barbecue Pulled Pork Nachos

The Shrimp Festival

The Wings

Our group eventually ordered some sandwiches including the Italian Beef and the Classic Burger. I didn't get to try either of these or grab a picture, but the general consensus was that they were acceptable. The beef was noted to be pretty dry.

Overall
It was pretty easy for me to pick apart each of the appetizers we ordered. They were all a bit chintzy for one reason or another. The sandwiches weren't anything special either. It was cheap, and we were able to conveniently bring a huge crew of people last minute. Still, I'm giving them 1 out of 5 Pearls.